A jargon-free journey through the world of social media.

March 23, 2012

Fear not: Facebook Fan Gating is back.

When Facebook recently rolled out the new Timeline look for brands, many social media professionals noticed a subtle and terrifying shift: "Fan Gating" no longer seemed to work.

As you probably know, Fan Gating or Like Gating is the tactic of requiring a Facebook user to Like a brand page before using an application or accessing exclusive content. It is one of the most proven and effective fan-growth tools for Facebook pages, especially those investing in high-quality apps.

Our initial testing of Timeline pages found a serious problem was suddenly hobbling fan-gated tabs. Once you clicked Like, the page remained the same. The only way to "unlock" the exclusive content was to manually refresh the page.

Other than asking visitors to "hit refresh at the top of your browser," there didn't appear to be many solutions.

But all that appears to be behind us. Facebook has quietly rolled out a return of proper Fan Gating in recent days, and our tests this afternoon showed them all working quite well (even legacy applications that were live before the TImeline switch).

If you're still experiencing Fan Gating problems, definitely let us know in the comments. For now, we're cautiously optimistic that this excellent tool for fan growth is back.

I should note that we still no longer have "Default Landing Tabs," which allowed your new Facebook visitors to see a Fan Gate instead of your wall. Facebook now sends every visitor to your Timeline, but that's OK. You can still use advertising and posts with links to drive viewers directly to your Fan Gated application.

Are there any other problems or quirks you've uncovered with Facebook Timeline for brands?

3 Comments

We launched a campaign on 3/12 and Facebook had thankfully fixed this issue a day or two before we went live.

As you ask for other quirky issues: If you have an unpublished page that is converted to the new timeline, and you're using the app_data querystring to send data to a tab, be aware that the unpublished page may have a querystring in the tab URL already, so you'll need to do &app_data= -- but when you move your tab to a live page or publish it, all calls need to be ?app_data=

Hey, I am the administrator of a facebook page and I want to implement a fan gate. I do not know how to use HTML or the other coding requirements, I just want implement the fan gate for non-likers. I have been trying out different apps, but they do not seem to be working for non-likers. I have noticed that in their "tutorials" that the last step, the default landing tab, does not apply on the new facebook anymore.